Why Don’t Churches Promote Other Churches?

The United Coalition of Reason is one of the groups responsible for putting up atheist billboards and bus ads across the country. It’s not really a group in and of itself. It’s main purpose is to promote local atheist groups in the area.

They want atheists to know there are other like-minded people out there and groups for them to join. Which group? It doesn’t matter. Whether you’re a Secular Jew or a Humanist or a capital-a Atheist is besides the point. But since we all don’t believe in God, we need to help each other out.

More importantly, if someone is looking for a group to join, maybe your group isn’t the best one for them. But maybe you can direct them to another group in the area.

This is something the Secular Coalition for America has done as well. Some donors may be unable to give money to SCA because it’s a 501(c)(4) lobbying group… but our staff directs those people to any of the 501(c)(3) member organizations.

It’s not a competition if we’re focused on the overall idea of getting people to support any non-theistic organization. When one group does well, we all benefit.

With that in mind, I’m surprised Christian churches don’t direct people to other churches more often. They seem so set on getting people to join their church that they lose sight of their ultimate goal of “winning people to Christ.”

We understand that there’s no “one size fits all” church for everyone, so here’s a list of other churches in the city we’d encourage you to check out as you look for a church home. These are Gospel-centered churches that we love and support:

Wow. That’s the coolest thing I’ve seen on a church website — a local church providing new folks with a list of other local churches to consider. (I’m not saying Park is the first or only church to do this — that really doesn’t matter — I’ve just never seen it before.) By telling me about other churches in the area, Park actually tells me a lot about itself as an organization.

The shock at seeing that is what I’m surprised about. You figure churches would’ve been doing this a long time ago.

Again, this isn’t about Christianity or which churches they’re promoting. It’s the very idea of supporting other people who share the big ideas with you even though they might differ in the details.

Why aren’t more churches doing this?

In the meantime, while they lag behind in supporting each other, atheists better take advantage of this interest in our ideas and support anyone who wants to donate or join a non-theistic group, even if it’s not the one we give to or belong to.